


The Final Problem

by thinklemonade



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Episode Fix-It: s04e03 The Final Problem, M/M, Post-Episode: s04e03 The Final Problem, Sherlock Series 4 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-22
Updated: 2017-01-22
Packaged: 2018-09-19 03:02:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9415079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thinklemonade/pseuds/thinklemonade
Summary: This is my Johnlock re-write of The Final Problem. Attempting to fill in a few plotholes and write the story I wanted to see. It's also my first story I've published here, so go easy on me. :D Any comments would be wonderful!





	

He wants to tell John. He comes very close to telling him, in that moment at 221b.  
  
But somehow John thinks he wants to be (should be?) with Irene. It is almost remarkable that still, after nearly five years, John still sees but does not observe. Or he hears. He hears that text moan and decides that the only possible interpretation of all the facts is that Irene, a lesbian, is both alive (which John really should find more surprising), and has, for some inexplicable reason, held a candle for Sherlock for three years. The birthday deduction was surprising and impressive, though as ever John misses nearly everything of consequence.  
  
Sherlock is consistently amazed by how highly John thinks of him, even now, when he seems to hate him. And that, more than anything else, is the proof that Sherlock has avoided, that all those who underestimate John Watson are right - he _is_ a fool. Anyone who would stand by the side of Sherlock Holmes all that time, who would forgive him his arrogance even when it killed the mother of his child - that person must be a fool. But Sherlock loves him.  
  
And he could have told him, should have told him, but that wasn't the time. It was obvious that John - like so many criminals - was burdened and needed to confess. And he wasn't confessing to Sherlock, obviously, both because it wasn't Sherlock whose forgiveness he needed and because he must know that Sherlock already knows.  
  
One thing Sherlock doesn't know is whether Mary knew or not, but it doesn't matter. Among the many things he liked very much about Mary - Mary, a cold-hearted assassin who shot him in the heart, Mary, a friend who amused and surprised him more than nearly anyone else (and certainly anyone good), who died for him to atone for a lifetime of that same socipathic selfishness that he knows defines him (or used to) - what he liked very much about her was that she was practical, unflinchingly so. It is no doubt what made her a good assassin, what would have made her a good mother, and what he imagines would have driven her to overlook it, what John was doing, if she did know. She wanted a family, some peace, even though she knew that her appointment was waiting in Samarra, and she wouldn't have sacrificed that - her chance at a family - over a few text messages. Does John somehow not realize that?  
  
So Sherlock listens to John's confession, watches him speak to the empty air, and then, when the man he loves dearly - the only person he's ever loved - dissolves before his eyes in a very un-soldierly way, he does the next best thing and holds him. John is suffering. This is not the time to unburden himself.  
  
He might have done it a few days later, instead, as the patience grenade sat there, but he couldn't. He feared he wouldn't do it justice, wouldn't say it right - particularly in front of Mycroft - and he decided, in a split second, that he would rather die never having said it than to fuck it up at a time so important. He considers also that emotion rarely proves an advantage in times of high stress (case in point: John's ridiculous decision to try to save him at the pool), and truthfully he still hopes that they will get out alive. He still believes in his intellect, somehow. It was, after all, not his intellect that got Mary killed - he figured out the danger (though he underestimated it) - it was his arrogance. And he is not arrogant in the face of the grenade, not at all, but he hopes. Hopes that John will survive, that perhaps he will as well, that this is not his last missed chance to say what he has to say.  
  
He doesn't know how John will respond, and he finds that it doesn't matter. He has imagined 17 distinct possibilities, comes up with new ones all the time, but in none of them is John hurt. Twelve of them hurt Sherlock - two perhaps irreparably - but he _knows_ John, knows him better than he knows anyone, and he cannot imagine a way in which this knowledge will hurt him.  
  
Perhaps it is selfish, too. He needs John - the person he loves most in all the world - to actually see him, to see the truth, to at least stop imagining that Sherlock will someday settle down with a lesbian dominatrix. He doesn't need John to know, doesn't _want_ him to know, that his impassioned _seize the day_ speech is preaching to the converted. That Sherlock knows, intimately, what it feels like to love and love and be too late. _That_ he would prefer to keep inside, to never lay at John's feet, but he needs, desperately, for John to know that he is loved, still, that even without Mary in the world there is still one person who loves him and will do anything for him.  
  
So he doesn't say it then either, and if his voice cracks slightly on the words he _does_ say ( _Good luck, boys)_ John misses it in the moment. Mycroft doesn't, of course, but Mycroft misses nothing, and the massive explosion that rips through the flat provides sufficient distraction from that conversation.  
  
It occurs to him, later, to wonder why Mycroft would have let him walk into Eurus's trap so woefully unprepared. Obviously she has overmatched Mycroft as well, apparently has done so since she was a small child - a fact which Sherlock might very much enjoy if the situation were different - but a warning about her connection with Moriarty, at least, might have gone a long way. And Mycroft did try to warn him, he supposes, though what he described sounded more like a supervillain than an actual person. But there's always a difference, he concedes, between being told something and experiencing it for yourself. To be laid bare in this way ( _have you had sex?)_ after doing it so often to other people is poetic justice, and if he weren't desperately afraid of what she would do to everyone else ( _to John)_ , it would be, almost, fun. Now he might enjoy playing with her in a way he apparently hadn't before, but even then some long unused part of him rears up with a warning ( _modesty?)_ that she beat him before and it seems very likely she could do it again.  
  
The fact is that she killed his dog just to hurt him. _She was just a child_ , some part of him leaps quickly to defend. Is he defending her because she is still, after everything, his sister, or is he defending some part of himself? He can see himself in her, which should frighten him, he supposes, but doesn't. She is, it would seem, a brain utterly without a heart, but there were times in his life, he knows, when he let the drugs strip him of virtually everything that made him human. He solved crimes, it's true, but it wasn't for a noble purpose - to help people, to make the world a better place, to get monsters off the street - it was to prove that he was smarter, cleverer, better than them. If good triumphed, it was only because he - Sherlock Holmes - had happened to fall on the side of the angels, not because it was inherently a stronger force.  
  
It was a horrible thing to say to him, perhaps the worst thing Mycroft had ever said - even though Sherlock know it wasn't intended that way. To be reduced to this: every crime he solved, everything he'd done, was to redeem himself, to prove himself clever, to make up for not being able to solve his little sister's riddle.  
  
It was galling to know that Mycroft had known, had stood by and watched his whole life rebuild itself around this one fact - obscuring it first with a better story ( _oh, Henry, another person he laid bare_ ). His mind palace was built on these ruins - it's no wonder he turned to drugs when he couldn't reconcile it all. And Mycroft had known, all along.  
  
And he'd nearly found it. That's the thing. He only remembers it now, of course, but his third overdose, he'd been descending. He'd found a door in the basement of his mind palace - it had appeared where there'd never been a door before - and he'd climbed downwards, downwards, for hours. And it had been drafty, had grown very cold, and he'd realized on one level - even then - that he was dying.  
  
Then he'd found it, another door ( _E)_ but it wouldn't open. No matter how he threw himself against it, no matter how he bloodied and bruised his knuckles, it wouldn't open, and he knew that this, this was the mystery he needed to solve. But then the light had come from above and he'd hoped, maybe, he was dying. Of course not. It was Mycroft. Always.  
  
He'd awoken determined to get back there, to go deeper, to find it. As soon as he could escape the hospital and shake Mycroft, he would go back. And he'd had every intention of doing that, but then he met John. And slowly, subtly, his work, his personality, his life had begun to re-orient itself, to re-define itself around a different center. It took him a long time, too long, to figure out what it meant. He'd waited too long, had realized only on that rooftop, and then by the time he could come back, it was too late. It had hurt, it had hurt more than he'd though possible - though he was not, of course, accustomed to any type of emotional pain - but after enough drugs, he came to terms with it. John didn't need to love him. And once he set his powerful intellect to reconciling it, he came ever further. It was better, in fact, if John didn't. Sherlock had always been dangerous, and the fact that John had survived this long, had survived a bomb strapped to him and a bonfire, was nothing short of a miracle. As long as John was nearby, in the world, Sherlock could make do. He could re-orient himself again, could include Mary - who had shot him.  
  
And the next time he'd gone down, the last overdose, in the plane, the door had been gone. He had lost it, his mind had re-organized, and he'd been, quite unpleasantly, confused. Had doubted his own mind.  
  
_Maybe it's Moriarty. Maybe it's not. I'll know when it begins._  
  
But he hadn't. Hadn't remembered. Hadn't been prepared. And it was easy to blame Mycroft, but there was no point now. Now the point was to survive.  
  
  
The problem is, he knows the moment he walks in who the coffin is for. He doesn't show it - or hopes he doesn't - but even before he sees the lid he feels the nauseous panic rising inside of him. Moriarty would not have hesitated to reveal it to her - his weakness - but now that he has met her he knows that it wouldn't have mattered. She would have seen it in seconds, the moment she saw them together (sooner, perhaps). People with far less impressive intellects than himself ( _really_ the stupid brother, apparently) have seen it. Molly has seen it.  
  
But he pretends that he doesn't know, because John doesn't, and Mycroft follows suit.  
  
"Right, so someone else is going to die. What about the girl on the plane?"  
  
"Patience, Sherlock. She has some time, but you don't. Will you save this person?"  
  
It is because Sherlock is working so hard at not looking at John that he doesn't see him walk towards the lid.  
  
"Sherlock?"  
  
He whips around, sees John reach for the lid and finds his voice fails him at first. "John, don't."  
  
The look on John's face as he reads the lid is not what Sherlock expected. He expects horror, fear, shock, but instead... the expression is so contextually and unexpectedly inappropriate that Sherlock struggles at first to interpret it. Then John laughs. It is a bewildered, beleaguered laugh, but a laugh. It hurts.  
  
"What is this?"  
  
John brings the lid closer, turning it so that they can see. _I love you._  
  
"Tell him, Sherlock." She is proud of herself.  
  
"For God's sake, Eurus," Mycroft snaps. "Why are you doing this to him?"  
  
"Because he forgot me." It would have been better, so much better, if there had been even the hint of emotion in her voice. This is where the villain snaps, reveals her motivations, becomes emotionally compromised in a way that allows the hero to defeat her. But that will never work, not on Eurus.  
  
"You I expected it from, Mycroft. You're a reptile and a utilitarian. You gave me a wide berth, even then. You could see it, what he couldn't. I could have forgiven you, even. But not him."  
  
She turns her eyes on Sherlock. "He's brilliant. He should have remembered me. I went to him, stood before him in two different guises, and still. He should have remembered me. He could have, _would have_ taken me out of here. But he forgot. So now he needs a little reminder."  
  
"Say it, Sherlock. Say it or I'll kill the little girl. And him."  
  
"You'll kill them anyway," Mycroft says. "The way you killed Victor." The words are out of his mouth before he can stop them, and he realizes what he has done.  
  
"Ye of little faith. I'm giving him another chance. One more. To save his little friend."  
  
Sherlock's mind goes white. He hears it, Redbeard's whining, the way it always comes to him when he is in freefall, but this time it changes. It is her voice, that song, and then, in the background, sobbing. It is a familiar sound, but at the same time one that he cannot recognize. It is only when the voice speaks that he recognizes it, and the freefall continues.  
  
_Tell me where he is, Eurus, please. Tell me where Victor is. We'll play with you. I'll play with you, I promise. Everyday. Whatever you want. Just tell me._  
  
But no, just the song.  
  
"Sherlock!"  
  
He feels the pain in his knees first, then the fingers gripping his shoulders. He would recognize those fingers anywhere, and he opens his eyes.  
  
"Sherlock, look at me." One of John's hands is touching his face now, and he is not sure that he can survive it. "Soldiers, Sherlock. Remember. Whatever she wants, just do it. Just say it. Do it for the little girl."  
  
_"_ Yes, Sherlock." That voice again. That awful, dead voice. "Say _I love you_. Say it like you mean it."  
  
He doesn't know how, but he stands, though his legs feel like lead. John is still there, behind him, and he begins to turn.  
  
"Look at me though, as you say it. I want to see it in your eyes. I want to feel it." She smiles, and he wonders how he could ever have hated Magnussen. Smith. "Jim told me, but I didn't believe him. Not my brother. He could never do something so foolish as to fall in love. But if it's true... well. Perhaps that will save him. But you have to convince me."  
  
He feels rather than sees John tense behind him. This was not one of the 17 possibilities. This is unimaginable.  
  
"Otherwise," she stretches it out. "I'll kill him, and Mycroft, and the little girl, and I'll leave you here, in this cell, to rot. Your choice."  
  
Sherlock closes his eyes. To say those words, the words he has kept locked inside for four years, now. In front of his monstrous sister. For her scientific curiosity. He was right. He should never have loved John. His arrogance, again, has brought them here, into her lair, and now he is being laid bare in the worst way, admitting his weakness, making John part of her game.  
  
But he has no choice. He takes a deep breath, looks at her. "I love you."  
  
Her blank eyes reveal, as always, nothing, so he does not know if he has succeeded, if he has convinced her, but he does not care. He turns.  
  
"John."  
  
He sees both in John's eyes, the confused doubt and the dawning realization, but he doesn't get to see what comes next - only the shock as the tranquilizer dart hits him at the same time.


End file.
